Dominating one wall in the Team GB gym at Sheffield's English Institute of Sport, two colossal photographs of Muhammad Ali loom over the amateur boxers busy at work below.
One shows the young Cassius Clay in Rome, collecting his light-heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Olympics; the other is of Ali posing, fists clenched, in his professional pomp, the world heavyweight title belt draped round his waist. The pictures serve as daily inspiration to the team, 'the Greatest' demonstrating what is possible.
Nicola Adams gazes on those images every day, still inspired by the man whose ring exploits led her to enter the sport.
"I want to leave this sport being seen as the best there's ever been," she said. "I'd love to be the Ali of women's boxing, to retire as the greatest. You see, for me now, it's all about my legacy."
At 33, Adams is already one of sport's most significant figures, a champion pioneer for women's boxing, the first to lift an Olympic title. Her success has attracted thousands of newcomers to boxing gyms and, having been open about her bisexuality, made her a trailblazer for the lesbian and gay community.
Yet somehow she still has this capacity to make it all sound as if she is just some wide-eyed kid at the start of an uncharted journey. Taking a half-hour break before wrapping up those delicate-looking fists that have punched her to boxing glory, she speculated on what may be to come.
Her aim, she said, was to complete her set of flyweight medals by winning a world championship gold in Kazakhstan in May after three previous silvers, then become the first woman ever to successfully defend an Olympic boxing gold in Rio.
After that, she wasn't sure. She might stay amateur to shoot for a third successive Games gold, thus emulating the achievements of the great Hungarian light-middleweight Laszlo Papp and Cuban heavyweights Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon in the men's game.
Turning professional after Rio also appealed: trying her hand at becoming a trans-Atlantic superstar and doing for women's pro boxing what Ronda Rousey has for mixed martial arts in the UFC.
"You just have to look at Ronda and how huge she's helped make UFC. She went from Olympic judo to UFC so I guess it just takes a big name and a bit of charisma and exciting talent to move over and change a sport forever," enthused Adams.
"In places like the U.S. and Germany, women's professional boxing is already quite big but I'd like to be the name that makes it bigger and gives it more global appeal.
"At the moment it's missing that star power. You need the audience saying: 'Oh yeah, I watched that girl from the amateurs, from the Olympics, I'm going to follow her pro career.'
"I'd love to be able to do that. I feel the love in Britain but I'd love to have a go in the States, maybe Los Angeles, where there's so many great, talented boxers. Perhaps that's where I could be based."
Being the game changer, naturally, would be no easy task. Adams is like a little chess grand master in the ring, a strategist and technician. Hers is a world of calculation, of controlled aggression; it's like a game of tag, she said, where you flit in and out.
Would this ring artist have the ammunition to provide the Rousey-style knockout pyrotechnics that would be demanded of her in the paid ranks? She sounded almost affronted by the suggestion. "I guess I'd have to look at my style and see what I'd need to do to change but don't forget how I won my Olympic gold, knocking down [Ren Cancan] in the second round.
"Who knows what I could do? If I've got my feet planted more, you might see more of that [knockout punching]. The thing is I've got the skills to adapt.
"I've watched the likes of Anthony Joshua develop as a finisher and for me, too, going pro would be almost like another adventure."
Adams still has to qualify to defend her Olympic crown in Rio, however, and was due to travel to Samsun in Turkey this week for the challenging European qualification tournament, which starts on Saturday.
It may seem extraordinary that a woman who has lost just one fight since topping the podium in 2012 -- and only then on a much-disputed verdict to Bulgarian opponent Stoyka Petrova in the 2014 European Championships when she was suffering from a torn bicep -- should not have yet been guaranteed a place.
"But that shows you how difficult it is now," said the flyweight who has added the Commonwealth Games and inaugural European Games golds to her collection since her historic London win.
"I wish I could just walk straight in to Rio but I suppose, in a way, it's kind of nice that I have to qualify and prove I'm still the best and worthy to box in the Games again. That's the sort of challenge that brings the best out of me."
It seems that beating the odds has always been a driving force for Adams; she comes from a notoriously tough neighbourhood in the English northern industrial city of Leeds, and was boxing as the lone female member of a club even before the Amateur Boxing Association lifted the ban on women fighting competitively.
Her entire career has been propelled by extraordinary self-belief. She seemed to know her destiny from the moment her mum Denver, who was divorced from Adams' father, dragged her to an aerobics class because she couldn't find a babysitter and saw how little Nicola preferred the look of the boxing class going on next door.
Yet it is one thing getting to the top and quite another to stay there, maintaining the hunger and passion to keep achieving. Every morning Adams breezes through the gym door at the English Institute of Sport, British Boxing's performance director Rob McCracken is left marvelling at his team captain's dedication.
"She's remarkable and I don't use that word lightly," said McCracken. "After achieving so much, you'd have thought there would have been less enthusiasm in some of her sessions and maybe she wouldn't be as focused and driven. Nothing could be further from the truth."
"Daily, she shows them [the rest of the team] what it takes to become an Olympic champion and, hopefully, to remain one."
With only one boxer per country eligible to compete at each Olympic weight and despite competition from within the British camp, Adams has been given the first crack at being Britain's sole flyweight qualifier for Rio.
Ambition is a driving force, but how does she handle that and the responsibility of having become a role model?
Adams found fame after 2012, making guest appearances in a British TV soap and being invited to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE from the Queen.
She was also listed by one London newspaper as one of Britain's most influential figures in the gay community.
"That's been really important for me," Adams said. "It isn't just sports people that need someone to look up to -- everyone needs that, LGBT people, the general public. To be honest, it's nice to feel that I can inspire so many people in so many areas of public life."
Adams does just that. The clamour that greeted her 2012 triumph is said to have resulted in a 50 percent increase in women taking up boxing for exercise, training or competition.
Her head might have been turned easily by all the fuss and the distractions that came with being feted. Not Adams, though. "I couldn't take my eye off the ball because, for me, the motivation is history," she said.
"I want the gold medal for my legacy; I want the full set with a world title, and I want to be a double Olympic champion. That thought that we've never had a fighter from Britain who has won double gold at boxing is enough to get me up in the morning. When it's pouring with rain outside on a filthy, cold morning and I have to go running, that single thought is enough."
And so do those pictures up on the wall. "When I was young I used to watch videos of Ali boxing, with my dad. It set me on the road. I wanted to be like Ali. I wanted to have my own Nicki shuffle and everything."
The great man made her dream then -- and he still does.